PUSS-MOTH. 193 



growth, when it is about as thick, and nearly as 

 long, as a man's thumb, and begins to prepare a 

 structure in which the pupa may sleep securely 

 during the winter. As we have, oftener than once, 

 seen this little architect at work, from the foundation 

 till the completion of its edifice, we are thereby ena- 

 bled to give the details of the process. 



The puss, it may be remarked, does not depend 

 for protection on the hole of a tree, or the shelter of 

 an overhanging branch, but upon the solidity and 

 strength of the fabric which it rears. The material 

 it commonly uses is the bark of the tree upon which 

 the cell is constructed ; but when this cannot be pro- 

 cured, it is contented to employ whatever analogous 

 materials may be within reach. One which we had 

 shut up in a box substituted the marble paper 

 it was lined with, for bark, which it could not pro- 

 cure*. With silk it first wove a thin web round the 



* It is justly remarked by Reaumur, that when caterpillars 

 are left at liberty among their native plants, it is only by lucky 

 chance they can be observed building their cocoons, because the 

 greater number abandon the plants upon which they have been 

 feeding, to spin up in places at some distance. In order to see 

 their operations they must be kept in confinement, particularly in 

 boxes, with glazed doors, where they may be always under the eye 

 of the naturalist. In such circumstances, however, we may be 

 ignorant what building materials we ought to provide them with 

 for their structures. A red caterpillar, with a few tufts of hair, 

 which Reaumur found in July feeding upon the flower bunches 

 of the nettle, and refusing to touch the leaves, began in a few days 

 to prepare its cocoon, by gnawing the paper lid of the box in 

 which h was placed. This, of course, was a material which it 

 could not have procured in the fields, but it was the nearest in 

 properties that it could procure , for though it had the leaves and 

 stems of nettles, it never used a single fragment of either. When 

 Reaumur found that it was likely to gnaw through the paper lid 

 of the box, and might effect its escape, he furnished it with bits 

 of rumpled paper, fixed to the lid by means of a pin ; and these 

 it chopped down into such pieces as it judged convenient for its 

 ■'.mature, which it took a day to complete. The moth appeared 



